Connectedness and Its Discontents: The Difficulties of Federalism and Criminal Law

When E. M. Forster chose “Only connect . . .” as an epigraph to his novel Howards End, he surely wasn’t thinking—it is safe to say—of the kind of connectedness among polities that Professor Wayne Logan describes in his rich, measured, and illuminating article. This should come as no surprise. Forster was exalting the weightless energy of passionate encounter. Logan’s research, by contrast, reveals the potential gloominess of connectedness. By focusing on the legal implications of the migratory patterns of criminal offenders, Logan’s article asks two important questions that have been given spare and insufficient attention. The first focuses on how states construct the criminal histories of the offenders who are now in their midst. The second asks what tradeoffs are implicated as states make their choices regarding how to interpret the pasts of these itinerant offenders as they relate to registration requirements or sentence enhancements for recidivism. Answering the first question, Logan observes the existence of two archetypal approaches a state might adopt when assessing an offender’s prior record: an internal one and an external one. Under the internal approach, the use of “out-of-